Love is a very intense and complex feeling. Sometimes, people feel the urgent need to love and be loved without taking into account the consequences that this entails. Surely you have heard of relationships between couples that have serious conflicts because one of the two people feels less than loved than the other.
This can trigger behaviors that are detrimental to the relationship. Love that becomes pathological is a condition that requires sustained and prolonged help to heal. In this Psychology-Online article we will provide you with information about what is love addiction and how it manifests itself. Discover the causes of this disorder and how to overcome it.
love addiction is a pathological action of one person with respect to another that manifests itself through attitudes of control, domination and submission. In turn, love addiction has as its characteristic feature a strong emotional dependence on the other person, which causes a compulsiveness to obtain the love of another human being.
Although this problem is not within the parameters established by the DSM-V, due to its diagnostic criteria it is possible to include it in the group of dependent personality disorders. Next, we specify what they are:
- urgent need for get someone else's attention.
- Behaviors of submission.
- Immediate search for another link if it ends with the current one.
Although the DSM-V emphasizes other characteristics, the ones mentioned are the most relevant because they more accurately denote if someone is addicted to love.
It is essential to take into account the possible causes of addiction to love to find solutions that lead to an improvement in the living conditions of the person who suffers from it. In the following items we will detail the causes of love addiction:
- Environmental factors: It is possible that the person has experienced situations of verbal and/or physical abuse within her family environment. These types of experiences cause insecurities that are replicated in future love relationships. In turn, the imitation of behaviors plays a transcendental role in this problem. In other words, if any of the reference figures is addicted to love, there is a good chance that the person will imitate the same pattern.
- Genetic factors: Genetic inheritance also plays an important role when analyzing the behaviors caused by love addiction. The neural connections associated with the processing of external information cause responses associated with the fear of abandonment by the loved one.
If you want to understand how the addiction to being in love manifests itself, you need to pay attention to the symptomatology experienced by someone with this clinical picture. In this section, we will explain how love addiction manifests itself:
- Need to control feelings of the loved person
- Unsafety constant.
- Jealousy.
- Distress.
- Fear to loneliness
- Disruptive behaviors in relation to one's own body.
- obsession with love
- catastrophic thoughts about other people and oneself.
The clinical diagnosis of someone addicted to love must be made by a mental health professional who has the specific and necessary knowledge to treat this pathology.
Beyond the difficulties that being addicted to love entails, there are ways to cure addiction to love. Here we will provide you with details about how to overcome a love addiction:
- psychological therapy: the most important step to find an effective solution is to undergo a psychotherapeutic treatment. On the one hand, this space provides tools to cope with the symptoms of love addiction. Emotions, thoughts and behaviors that promote the pathology are worked on. Although it may take considerable time, it is necessary heal wounds from the past and the present.
- Focus on own aspects: people addicted to falling in love focus all their energy on another person and put aside their own projects and goals. Therefore, to overcome a love addiction, it is important that you take into account your qualities and that you put them into practice to focus your thoughts and actions on other people.
- Meditation: This practice works breathing and conscious concentration. It can be done both autonomously and directed by an instructor. Mainly, meditation is a space that consists of let go of negative thoughts.
- Maintain a good diet and sleep hygiene: This aspect is key to curing love addiction, since the body somatizes the emotions we experience. Eating a balanced diet and sleeping well alleviates the symptoms of a love addict.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
